Of Names by John Stuart Mill

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John Stuart Mill - one minor mistake
Jeffrey Kaplan
Jun 4, 2023
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This is the first in a series of video lectures built for my college course in the philosophy of language.

John Stuart Mill lived in England from 1806 to 1873. He was a philosopher and also a Member of Parliament. Much of his philosophical work is in moral and political philosophy. He was the student of Jeremy Bentham and, like Bentham, an advocate of Utilitarianism. He was the second Member of Parliament to argue that women should be granted the right to vote. Mill also wrote one of the early and central works in the philosophy of language, 'Of Names,' which is what we are reading for this course.

This video lecture discusses several distinctions among types of names that Mill introduces:
General Names vs. Singular Names
Collective Names vs. Non-Collective Names
Connotative Names vs. Non-Connotative Names
But it important to note that Mill's term "names" doesn't just include proper names, like “Susan” or “Frederick” or “Dartmouth” or “North Carolina.” The term also encompasses, for example, definite descriptions, like “the tallest human on Earth,” “the cat,” and “the teacher of Plato.”
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Jeffrey Kaplan examines the distinction between general and singular names, as well as connotative and non-connotative terms. The lecture explores how proper names function as unmeaning marks to pick out individuals, contrasting them with definite descriptions that convey additional information.